5 Things To Know About Hillary's VP Pick, Tim Kaine

He's known as Mr. Nice Guy.

Today, Hillary Clinton announced that she has picked Virginia Senator Tim Kaine to be her running mate.

Widely seen as a "nice guy", Kaine has a solid reputation in Washington, but a pretty small profile when it comes to the general public. (He's certainly made fewer headlines than Elizabeth Warren, who was also reportedly on the candidate's short list.)

And so, we decided to put together a list of five things you should probably know about your potential next vice president:

This isn't Kaine's first time being a VP contender.

According to Obama's former campaign manager, David Plouffe, Kaine was in the running to be the current president's right hand man. Talking Points Memoreports that during the 2008 election, Obama's short list was down to Kaine, Senator Evan Bayh, and eventually the winner, Joe Biden. Plouffe said Kaine didn't harbor any ill will over not being selected — he just wanted to help Obama win the election.

Some Democrats worry he isn't liberal enough

In the wake of Bernie Sanders's run for Democratic nominee, many liberals had hoped that Hillary would select a candidate that appealed to the same liberal base. Although Kaine is seen as a safe choice, publications like The New York Times and Politico report that progressives are not happy about him as VP considering his Wall Street-friendly policies and partiality to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which Sanders hated.

He's the first senator to give a speech entirely in Spanish on the Senate floor.

Kaine learned Spanish while working as a missionary in Honduras — and he put his language skills to good use in 2013 when the Senate was debating the immigration overhaul bill. “We are going to have hours upon hours of debate about this on the floor of the Senate, and taking 15 minutes to explain the bill in Spanish just seemed like a good idea,” Kaine said, according to The Times. “Latinos have so much invested in the outcome of the bill, people ought to know what the bill is about.” That respectful attitude toward immigrants certainly contrasts with that of Donald Trump.

He's an advocate for gun control.

Kaine was serving as governor of Virginia during one of the darkest days in the state's history: on April 16, 2007, a shooter took the lives of 32 people at Virginia Tech. CNN reports that Kaine took on the role of "healer-in-chief" — aiming to help his community rebuild, and create stricter gun control throughout the state and country. Although he is a gun owner himself, Kaine is strong advocate for gun control and joined his colleagues in the House for their recent sit-in over gun control.

Although Voxreports that Kaine has been vocally pro-choice as a senator, that wasn't always the case. When the Roman Catholic politician was running for governor in 2006, he wrote that he had "a faith-based opposition to abortion" on his campaign website, and vowed to reduce abortion across Virginia. The Hillpoints out that while Kaine doesn't want to overturn Roe v. Wade and has a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood for his votes as a Senator, he has backed other controversial restrictions like parental ­notification laws and bans on late-term abortions.